Stuck in Place

I read this article a while back and it got me thinking a fair amount about this question - why don’t those who lose their jobs when factories or plants close move to where more jobs and opportunities are? There are some economic reasons brought up that might be managed through smart policy, like how to help those whose house goes underwater after property values fall in a now declining town can get out from under them so they can relocate, but there are other things like people’s “rootedness” that are much harder to address with policy.

It feels to me a problem closely associated with the sense of entitlement many complain about with respect to various government programs. People’s complaints about jobs and their own actions concerning work makes me think Americans see life from a passive perspective. Work hard, yes, but at whatever is placed before you. There isn’t much to figure out. Get a job at the plant Dad did or whatever major employer is in your town. If you have the right attitude you can get that job and keep it. Everything should fall into place from that. Get a house, get married, have kids. That’s the “American Dream.” But the American heroes are seen as such precisely because they didn’t do that. They went out and found their own way in spite of the uncertainty and risk. They carved their own place in the world. Such personalities are rare, I admit. Still I believe we should look to them as well as our immigrant ancestors, who worked hard for little so that we their descendents would have much, for inspiration on how to tackle adversity.

    The technological advances of the last two centuries have largely covered up the fact that living is hard. We are in constant need of things to maintain ourselves and prepare against potential disasters. The history of civilization is a tale of how our ingenuity has made it easier and easier to do these things. As such we are provided more time to spend on tasks that do not directly relate to meeting our needs, especially in such a revolutionary era when advances in technology are occurring at a blistering pace. However, we are spending a ton of time on things indirectly related to meeting our needs - our jobs. The availability of those jobs and their pay relative to the cost of goods changes constantly.

While we should all be working less and getting more because of technology, that is not happening. While I think it was true as we moved from the 19th to the 20th century, it appears less true as we transitioned from the 20th into the 21st. Many of the manufacturing and machining  jobs that paved way for the forty hour work week and allowed the average American to earn a comfortable wage for work that required little schooling or education are gone. But they aren’t gone in the way so many believe they are. These jobs didn’t all get moved out of the country. Many of them became obsolete because of newer technologies. The integrated circuit board has completely changed electronics. Those can’t be made with a bunch of people on an assembly line the way various car parts still are. That’s a huge change for an entire industry. And as these components have gotten more complicated such that we have machines building them, so have those machines building them. They’ve gone from  merely mechanical to electronic. Thus the repair jobs that required a little training and understanding of mechanical systems now require a deeper understanding of electronics in addition to mechanics. The number of skilled technicians to maintain and repair these machines may have increased, but that increase pales in comparison to the number of jobs lost to those machines.

That is why in the 90s there was cultural push for more people to get college degrees. It was clear then that the jobs of the future would be ones that necessitated knowledge not provided at the high school level. The problem was that push was rather vague. “Everyone needs a degree” may have created more engineers but it also created more writers, historians, music theorists, and scholars of women. This is not a bad thing so long as 1) resources are allocated equitably such that those who received non-technical non-production related degrees can still provide for themselves and 2) enough people do learn the technical skills the job market demanded. Given the issues many firms are having filling positions and the struggle others are having finding decent paying jobs in their field of expertise, I think it is is safe to say we have failed on both counts here.

So how do we fix it?

There is a radical solution that may be needed, but for now I’ll stick to a more basic solution. We must face the attitude which demands jobs return, that asks government to fix problems that we refuse to face ourselves, that grows out of a sense of complacency for what is.

It’s strange to me that such an attitude would be seemingly so pervasive here. The United States was founded by people who had difficulty living life the way they wanted to and chose to take the chance and opportunity the Americas presented for them. They went out and made for themselves what they wanted. We celebrate their overcoming of the hardships they found in their new home every year for Thanksgiving. But the Pilgrims and other early migrants to America were not the last group to experience difficulties in the hopes of creating a better life than was available in home countries. Again and again people poured out from places lacking in resources or opportunities to take their chances in the United States. The Irish and the Germans, the Poles and the Chinese, and more recently the Mexicans and other Central and South Americans. We call our great country the Land of Opportunity because that’s what it is and that’s part of what makes it so great. We tell ourselves that success is possible for anyone as long as you work hard and put forth your best effort. And people came, and continue to come, willing to do just that. Such a work ethic and the things it has produced has made the US the largest economy in the world and its most powerful nation. Pretty impressive for a country that has only been on the map for 240 years.

    But for those whose families have been here a few generations, that work ethic has degenerated. People have become comfortable with lifestyles that are more leisurely and rooted in places they have lived their entire lives. They like their neighbors and coworkers. The love their house, which may be the one they grew up in. They’ve worked hard, though probably less so than their parents, and hope their children will have it even easier than they did thanks to the resources they were able to provide. They want that trend to continue. They want things to stay the same.

    Things do not stay the same. The world is a dynamic place. Mines dry up. Products become obsolete. Companies, even rather large ones, go out of business. We must stay nimble and adapt to those changes rather than steadfast in our lifestyles. If we do the later rather than the former, we become obsolete ourselves. There is no place in this country for a lamplighter, and we would likely make fun of anyone demanding that job come back to prominence, yet the present demands for certain types of jobs are not far off from such a request. The products those jobs created are no longer wanted or simply don’t need the same workforce to produce. And just like the lamplighter who likely didn’t know much about electricity, factory workers don’t have the knowledge or background to find a new job working with the products that replaced their position. There aren’t many paths that allow them to maintain a middle class lifestyle or better that doesn’t include learning new skills. But these people entered their line of work precisely because it did not require much knowledge or training before hand yet still paid well. That paradigm is disappearing, but the mindset is not.

    I am not saying that wanting things to be better for one’s children is a bad thing. Nor is believing that a hard day’s work should be sufficient for providing not only the necessities of life but some comforts as well. I want these things for everyone. But what once allowed for these things to occur a generation ago, or even a decade ago, may not be able to do the same now or in the future.

There are too many things at play that can create changes in the economic conditions that allowed for the middle class lifestyle many are mourning the death of in their town. People are now demanding that government take steps to harness and control those economic forces so things don’t change. But doing so will in turn make things change. It’s difficult to see the effects of globalization in our daily lives. So many things pass through international markets before arriving in our own towns or that we produce in order to sell on those international markets. Closing borders may force us to build some things here, but it can also mean we can’t make as much of other things because we don’t have anyone to sell to. Trade should occur as a positive sum game, and generally is. Yet, so many are convinced it has been a losing proposition for the US because certain jobs have become less prevalent. The disappearance of those jobs is one of many effects of low trade barriers. The positives are not as easily seen as the negatives so people don’t know what they’ve gained from them. They could soon find out if our President-elect follows through on his protectionist, tough on trade talk. We may be looking at both fewer jobs and higher prices.

    Still, regardless of what changes are made to our trade policies, we must find the industrious spirit of our forefathers. We must work where there is work that needs done and should lean on employers to pay wages sufficient for the American Dream. If the market cannot support such demands by labor, then it may be necessary to take a more radical approach towards changing our economy. I am of the opinion that the more radical solution may be necessary after all, and will write more about it in the future, but I don’t think we can make a case for bigger changes unless we try and make what we have work. Right now our system isn’t working, but we the people aren’t working at it either. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

I stand with you

The worst part of the election for me has to do with the amount of vitriol thrown in this cycle, much of it landing on friends, family, loved ones, and fellow citizens who have done nothing wrong but be themselves. And it was spewed by our President-elect. It is incredibly painful for me. I can only image what it must be like for them. Someone who clearly does not respect women, believes all Muslims are dangerous, believes Mexicans coming to our country are rapists and murderers, and who chose a VP who believes in conversion therapy was elected in spite of it all. As a country we believed these were justifiable positions or otherwise irrelevant characteristics to have in a President and running mate.

Knowing this, it seems impossible to me that the United States will ever be a country where everyone is treated equally. These same supporters have been the ones to deny the hundreds of deaths at the hands of police each year is a problem, but the deaths of cops by black men are. They are the same people who think sexual assault victims are lying when they report the crimes perpetrated against them and do so for the attention, especially if the accused is anyone of notoriety. They believe freedom of speech entitles them to share their derogatory comments to anyone about anyone without any blowback from either party.

And that worries me. We are pride ourselves on being the land of the free. But many are not free in the same sense others are. The growing voices of those who are still restrained by our institutions has scared those with that greater freedom as they think to make room at the table they will have to lose some of the privileges they’ve always had. They point to the replacement of well paying jobs with service industry jobs that pay mediocre wages is proof of what that path holds. They think the path to greater equality is less for all. We have been unable to convince them that the alternative to taking space away from those at the table in order to seat more is to build a bigger table. I’m not certain what it’s going to take to convince people of this and fear we are headed for a Hobbesian nightmare of take what you can for yourself for as long as you can hold onto it.

Speaking with some who supported Trump, I get a sense of disaffectedness with our government from them. That Washington was not doing anything to make their lives better and as long as we kept electing more of the same, which Clinton is certainly an example of, nothing was going to change. They felt a need to take a chance on someone who wasn’t like those already in Washington in order to actually get something different. Trump was that option for them. From my perspective they didn’t look closely enough at what those different things (the bigotry, authoritarianism, misogyny, and deceitfulness) would be. They chose to take a pill with a sugar center and either failed to recognize it was coated in cyanide or didn’t care. I cannot respect such short-sighted gambling, even though I do sympathize with the need for change in Washington.

I hope this public choice will not bring about my deepest fears associated with it. I hope we can come together and help each other through the difficulties we all face. I hope we can respect each other and recognize the truth in our cries of pain. But the mockery and apathy and victim blaming I have witnessed leaves me skeptical and uncertain that the America of my dreams will ever be.

Equal Access to Pools

     At the beginning of summer, I realized I didn't know where a community pool was near where I lived. Throughout my commutes to and from work I would think about this as I passed various neighborhoods with their own pool houses and the YMCA with an indoor pool. I kept wondering where the city's public pool was. The more I thought about it, the more I started wondering when neighborhoods started building their own pools and whether it was a suburban thing, as I don't remember seeing such private pools in the smaller town I grew up in. I thought about the divisive nature of these private pools, how they allowed those who could afford in such neighborhoods to insulate themselves from those different from them, and how those different people were more likely to be black or Hispanic.

     With the recent success of Simone Manuel at the Summer Games in Rio and the discussion of racial segregation at the pool, I've started thinking about this topic again. Finally doing some research into the subject I wasn't surprised by what I found. Prior to the 1950s private pools were very rare but were generally racially as well as gender segregated. Shortly after the mid-century point, communities started to allow men and women to swim together, but insisted on separate facilities for black people. In some places the racial division was done through the laws, which were eventually challenged, while other places allowed its residents to enforce unofficial segregationist policies while looking the other way during the violent encounters that ensued.

     As the civil rights movement gained momentum and courts overturned the laws keeping pools racially separated, more and more pools were built on private lands in ways that mirrored white flight out of the cities and into the suburbs. Some of them were back yard pools, but many were behind the gates of country clubs and neighborhood associations. This privatization of pools allowed their users to maintain a homogeneous group of users without running afoul of the law. In a few cases, the move from public to private occurred to the same pool. Cities that owned and operated the pools and who were in support of segregation would sell their pool to private organizations who would continue to restrict access based on race.

     This divestment of public interest in pools has had a lasting effect for poor and disadvantaged groups. The number of public pools per capita is smaller than it was 60 years ago, and those that do exist are often in whiter middle class parts of town making it more difficult for those less well off to access them. The diminished access helps explain the large number of black and Hispanic children who don't know how to swim – they simply do not have anywhere to learn.

     Simone Manuel winning gold medals for swimming is certainly a seminal moment in US history, but her success does not mark the end of racially motivated policies in America. We still have plenty of work to do if we believe it important that all children should have the ability to learn to swim and enjoy a hot summer day in the pool. Perhaps a move back to community or city pools can provide a place where people can come together and recognize the humanity and fundamental sameness in one another rather than fear each others' differences in ways that play out on city streets where cops disproportionately respond to black citizens with violence and targeted communities react with riots.

Sources:

Rachel Martin interviews Jeff Wiltse about his book “Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America”

Jeff Wiltse relates the content of his book to the police breaking up of a pool party in McKinney, TX.

A further discussion of the situation in McKinney, TX in historical context.

On Equality of Opportunity

      I read an article today by Melissa Winkler with the Society of St. Vincent De Paul concerning the percentage of income that the least well off spend on necessities as compared to those in higher income brackets. The information seemed very obvious; people with low incomes by definition have less money. Since prices of staples are not income dependent (e.g. gas, food, clothes), it follows that these people are spending larger percentages of their income on them. It is possible for those to with greater incomes to be buying more of these things or to buy items of higher quality and therefore higher price, so the information is not simply a tautology. Still, it doesn't surprise me in the least.

      I was on the verge of chiding myself for wasting my time reading something that I basically already knew, but then I found the value in the article. The author did a great job following the facts with their ramifications. When someone spends 40-50% of their income on housing and another 10% on electricity, not to mention any other utilities, the bills quickly pile up such that it can be very difficult to have anything left over for things like schooling or job training programs.

      That idea made me think about the resources available to people to improve their circumstances and employability. The main tool people utilize in education, business, and even their personal lives is the loan. But loans are not free money. Banks and other financial institutions need to be convinced the money they are lending is likely to return to them. They also want collateral so that should one default on the loan they can salvage some of the lost funds through the sale of whatever was put up against the loan. In the most common cases, the item placed against the loan is the item(s) bought with the loaned money, for instance houses, cars, or business equipment and property.

      Education and skill training is different. The borrowed money isn't buying an object, but knowledge. The money is often used not only to pay for the classes and certification exams but also the basic necessities as those classes don't often leave enough time for one to earn a wage great enough to pay for such. Thus many of the loan programs for education and training are through government programs rather than private banks. There simply isn't an obvious profit incentive for private firms to loan money for education. The drop-out and incompletion rates are too high and having a degree or certification does not guarantee a job that pays enough to cover one's bills and the loan itself.

      So it appears our society recognizes that there are market short comings in providing the means for improvement and has programs in place to compensate for these shortcomings. But are the programs enough? Are people from the bottom quintile in income or those below the poverty line able to utilize these programs to move out of poverty? What would be a good metric for determining if these programs are doing enough to say economic mobility is not only possible but actively taking place in the United States? Does it have to be seen through a single generation or would parents laying the ground work for their children to lead more economically stable lives be enough? Who is using government loan and grant programs? Is it the least capable of paying or are more people from the middle utilizing such programs to compensate for the continuously growing cost of higher education?

      I'm not sure the answers to any of these questions are out there, but I'd like to try and find them. If the United States is going to be labeled as a land of opportunity, it should be proven to be so and not just for a select few who's evidence is anecdotal but for any and all willing to take the necessary steps and risks to make their lives better and in the process this country as well.